The Road Home | Glimpses of Moments Gone Before They Arrive

Sometimes it's good to experiment, to throw away the rule book and try something different, visually, technically or otherwise. 

A dark afternoon. Sitting in a car travelling northwards towards a darker night.

The A82/A87 trunk road makes up the majority of the drive home from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye. I must have driven it hundreds of times, mostly in the rain. Late December and the days have become short. In fact, the shortest is just around the corner. The weather at this time of year darkens the days further. Sunset is around 3.30pm. It's bleak out there but there's a certain beauty in it. 

This time I was a passenger. That is not often the case. Moments captured through the window of a car winding its way though the drizzly Scottish Highlands, eager to get home, to the island and to Christmas. Forests, fences, a stone wall, moorland and heather. Often blurred and far from sharp. Nothing overly remarkable. Glimpses of moments almost gone before they arrive.

It's All About Process...

There's something I love about the process of producing images in this way - the double elements of chance and surprise, the not truly knowing what the outcome of each shot will be and the fleetingness of the moment emphasised tenfold by our onward movement through the landscape. The idea that sharpness and technical perfection don't matter. Freedom and the absence of the total control over process given to us by digital technology.

It's good to take a small step back for a while and try something a little more chaotic, a little more organic and a little less organised where the results are never such a sure thing. The results don't even matter.